


Five Alarms

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Firefighters, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Military Background, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, References to Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 12:26:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17446973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: After returning from the military, Anthony Kostin tries to understand why - when his family loves him, he's married, and has a son - his life feels so unhappy. And why making a choice that could bring happiness means he has to self-destruct.





	1. January 2078

**Author's Note:**

> Um... I'm nervous about posting this one. Mostly because I think it's kind of dumb.
> 
> I know in the tags it says "references to canon," and there are a few, but there's more parallels between this story and the events of my first FO4 work (and also the first thing I posted on this site): [Part 1: ... Nightmares ... Cigarettes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7861828). If you've read that one you'll probably recognize those parallels. But, plus side, there's no death in this one (yet. I'm not actually finished writing it at the time I'm posting the first chapter. But death seems very unlikely). There is also a lot of backstory for Anthony in [Days In The Life Of A Young Russian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885836).
> 
> Also, if you think you recognize the last names of a bunch of hockey players in here, you're almost certainly right. I have a hard time coming up with names for background characters.
> 
> The lengths of the chapters will be inconsistent. I apologize for that in advance.
> 
> I'm also trying something REALLY new: I'm going to do my best to post this on a schedule. The days of posting will be Wednesday night. (I may forget to do this, though, or get impatient and just put up everything that's already been written. I'm like that sometimes.)
> 
> ADDENDUM. Yeah, so, I'm too impatient to post this on a schedule and I've finished the narrative, so I'm just going to put up all the chapters now.

“Is this going to be one of those fire stories that keeps me up at night?” Nora asked, spooning out soup and glaring at the gauze taped over his cheek.

“No,” Anthony lied. “It’s nothing. I got caught on some machinery at Mass Fusion before I got called to the fire.”

“Really.” Even pouring milk into the bottle for Shaun, there was no disguising the fact that she saw right through him. Finally she sat down across from him at the table. “Is this like that huge scar on your back that absolutely had nothing to do with an exploding bomb?”

Anthony sighed. “Fine. We lost control of a hose because the nozzle turned out to be broken. The shank caught me there.”

“Even your hoses are trying to kill you!”

“You know what, you should call my mother and ask her about this,” he offered. “Because she chews out my pop for exactly the same stuff.”

“Well, she’s probably right,” Nora groused.

It was weird, Anthony reflected, how his career path was so similar to his father’s. Marko hadn’t been in the army, but after college hadn’t been able to get a job with General Atomics like he’d tried to do - so instead ended up working for Big John’s Salvage and volunteering with Jamaica Plain Fire Department. Anthony had wanted to get into Mass Bay U but wasn’t accepted, ultimately joining the army and subsequently EOD. Now, he was three months into his new job as a technician with Mass Fusion and also a volunteer firefighter. In his case, though, Sanctuary Hills was a suburb and didn’t have its own fire brigade, so he belonged to Concord Volunteer Fire Department.

“Why do you have to be a fireman, Anton?”

“Because my pop’s one, I guess,” he shrugged. “Because I want to help. I guarantee you it’s less dangerous than anything I was doing in the army.”

“When you were in the army I didn’t have to see you come home from work hurt,” Nora pointed out. “And it makes me worry that someday when Shaun grows up, he’ll want to do the same dangerous stuff you’ve made a career out of…”

“If he does, it’s his prerogative, isn’t it?” Anthony replied, shrugging a second time. Really, though, he didn’t want his son to turn out like him. Something was wrong with him and he knew it, but he didn’t think Nora needed to be told about that. Even if she had suspicions (which she might; she was smarter than him for sure), he wasn’t going to confirm them. “It’s a free country. If he wants to be a fireman when he grows up, he should be allowed to.” Then he smiled at her to disguise his uneasy thoughts about himself. “Alright, enough worrying for now, okay? How’s your case going?”

“Terrible,” Nora muttered, glaring at her soup bowl. “This woman is being beaten by her husband and it looks like he’ll get to keep custody of their children.”

“That’s awful,” Anthony agreed. No wonder she was trying to rip him a new one - she’d had a bad day at work. “Isn’t there a way around it?”

“The legal system is rigged in the favor of men,” she sighed. “If a man wants to divorce his wife, all he has to prove is that she’s been cheating on him. If a woman wants a divorce, he needs to be beating her or their children. Or if it turns out he’s a sexual deviant or something.”

Anthony almost choked swallowing his cola, but managed not to.

“You know it’s the things you’ve seen as a lawyer that make me lose faith in humanity more than anything I saw during the war?”

“I find that a little hard to believe.”

“Well, the Chinese weren’t abusive husbands. They just tried to kill us. It’s the more loving thing to do, really.”

Thankfully that got her to smile a little. “At least _I_ have a good man to come home to every night, right? Even though some nights you’re out until morning because people’s houses keep burning down.”

“Actually we get called to institutional fires and car accidents more,” Anthony explained, refusing to think about how wrong she was. He was a bad husband and he knew it, even if she didn’t. “There was a five-alarm fire at a college that we had to go to a couple weeks ago.”

This got them back on his face injury, which had Anthony explaining coupling shanks and why the water pressure caused hoses to whip around if they went uncontrolled, and that led him somehow to firefighting foam of all things and how weirdly fascinating it was. Shaun got put to bed after Codsworth tidied up, and Anthony called his sister while Nora watched the evening news.

“Hello?”

“ _Privet,_ Anichka.”

“Anton.”

“How are things?”

“I’m still not used to this apartment yet. Denis and the girls love it, though.”

Anna, in both family traditions, had not only found a Russian guy to marry but had also ended up becoming a nurse like their mother. Her husband was a doctor and their twin daughters loved to climb Anthony like a jungle gym when he visited.

“How’s Mass Bay Med?”

“Enormous. It’s been a month and I still get lost.”

“But don’t you just stay on one floor? I thought that’s how it worked in hospitals.”

“Usually, but sometimes I have to go to other departments to help with things. Children still need to go to radiology or surgery.”

“Right.” He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “I was going to visit Sashka this weekend, are you going to come?”

“What time?”

“Probably afternoon if I’m not called to a fire. Nora’s taking Shaun to that parents’ group.”

“Shouldn’t you go to those, too?” Anna wondered. “It’s been months.”

“Don’t remind me,” he groaned. “But after so many damn briefings on this that and the other thing I can’t stand sitting still in a room listening to people talk.”

“Is that why you finally left the army?”

“Well, it didn’t hurt the decision-making process,” Anthony chuckled. “But no, it’s because I wanted to spend time with Shaun and Nora. And I missed mom and pop, and yeah, you too, despite your best efforts.”

He heard talking in the background, then: “Denis says you should go out with him after, he knows a bar you should check out.”

“I don’t go to bars.”

“Just humor him, all of his friends are other doctors. He needs to talk to people who’re dumber than him sometimes so his ego doesn’t get any bigger than it already is.”

“Gee, thanks.” Anthony snort-laughed as he was saying it. “Shaun’s birthday is in two weeks, will you be over?”

“Will _you?_ ” Anna taunted. “You weren’t even here for him being born in the first place.”

“I got a pass from the fire brigade, they won’t be allowed to call me in that day.”

Anna sighed on the other end of the phone. “Alright, Anton, we’ll be over with the girls.” Then she started whispering: “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course,” he answered, and he meant it. He’d kept lots of secrets in his life.

“Denis knows about this already, but the girls don’t, and I’m going to wait until we’re all together to tell everyone… I’m pregnant again.”

“That’s great!” It made Anthony glad they were speaking in Russian, because the surprise wouldn’t be ruined for Nora. His wife and his sister were surprisingly good friends. “Why don’t you tell everyone at Shaun’s birthday? It’ll be perfect, we’ll all be there anyway so it’s a good time. Mama’s going to be so excited for you. Are you worried?”

“No, not at all. Statistically it’s so improbable for it to be more twins that it’s essentially impossible, so there’s no way it’ll be as hard as the first time,” she laughed. “Natashenka and Maryana get along so well together, so this probably won’t be difficult for them, either. I told Denis he can’t go bragging to his friends yet, though.”

“You need to have a boy this time,” Anthony told her jokingly. “That way Shaun has someone to play with.”

“Why don’t you just have more kids?”

“Oh, we’d love to, but we don’t have enough money. I love kids, I’d have five or six if we could afford it and if Nora would let me.”

“You work in the nuclear industry.”

“So does half the country. Most of the money coming into the house is on Nora’s paycheck, I have no seniority and I’m not in a combat zone anymore, so now I have to pay taxes again.”

“My idiot husband is now offering to buy you a nicer house in Cambridge so you can be closer to everyone.”

“What? No! Don’t be ridiculous, we’re finally getting back to normal and I don’t want to move, it’s nice here.”

“But it’s such a long drive to visit.”

“That’s not a good reason!” Anthony laughed. “Tell Denis I said no! It’s only a half-hour drive if traffic is good.”

“Don’t worry, I told him no, too. He’s being weird about it. What? _Nyet!_ Denis Andreyevich Shevchenko, you stop that, right now!”

“Alright, you’re obviously busy, so I’ll let you go,” he chuckled. “Give my love to the girls, _poka-poka._ ”

“ _Potseluy i obyatiya, poka-poka._ ”

After going to a fire today, Anthony was beat, and he told Nora so before showering and retiring for the night. It’d been a good few months, he decided, getting adjusted to life as a civilian and spending time with his family. He’d heard from other veterans that it was often difficult to make the switch, but he wasn’t struggling terribly with it most of the time. He went to work in a green jumpsuit instead of that ridiculously heavy armor from Mt. Desert Island, he put data on radioactive material storage into a computer instead of disarming Chinese artillery encampments, he held his infant son instead of a laser rifle.

He should be happy.

But deep down, he knew he wasn’t.

Anthony got enough military-type work being a fireman, he got to keep things organized as a technician for Mass Fusion. His parents were proud of him, his sister was happy, he had a beautiful wife and son. Any man would be perfectly content to have those things, so maybe he was just an ungrateful bastard who wasn’t okay being normal. Or maybe he just needed reminding what “normal” was, now that he wasn’t at liberty to sneak around with another EOD sergeant and cheat on his wife whenever the urge got too strong. It hurt so much that he’d let things get to that point, and he knew he could never come clean about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian:
> 
> [Privet] Hi  
> [Nyet] No  
> [Potseluy i obyatiya] Hugs and kisses  
> [Poka-poka] Bye


	2. September 2083

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who haven't read my other FO4 stuff, I gave Danse a first name.
> 
> Also, I'm pretty sure Danse has autism, because I have autism and he's got a lot of the same tells I have (using words way too big for normal conversation, over-explaining/over-describing things even if people didn't ask, not understanding jokes, etc.)

And yet, despite what he’d said in that weird conversation however many years ago, now Anthony was sitting in the car outside the kindergarten in Cambridge. He’d been called for a traffic accident this morning and ended up not going to work at all, so now he had time to pick up Shaun: it was his son’s first day of kindergarten. He had to admit, the kindergarten in Cambridge was nicer than the one in Concord.

Ultimately what made them move was Nora transferring to CIT’s law office - it was less work, it was less _difficult,_ and it paid a lot more. So now they lived in a college town, and Anthony was considering applying to be part of the fire brigade full-time instead of still working for Mass Fusion. He had a sneaking suspicion they were lying to him about what his personal dosimeter said at the end of each work day, and he liked being a fireman better anyway.

The doors of the building finally opened, so Anthony got out of his car and only had to wait ten seconds until Shaun was running over and flying into his arms.

“Hi, Papa!”

“Hey, kiddo, how was your first day?”

“Fun!” Shaun squirmed out of his arms again and climbed into the backseat of the car. “They got so many toys there! Even fire helmets! So I got to be like you today!”

“Oh, that’s fun,” Anthony grinned. “Did you make any friends?”

“Yeah! There’s Teddy, and Bruce, and Tina, and Sally, and Clark! We made buildings out of the blocks and saved them from fires all day!”

“Wow, good for you. Are you going to be a fireman someday, too?”

“Yeah, I’mma be a fireman just like you, Papa!”

 _Nora’s going to hate that,_ Anthony thought to himself, but his son was happy and that made him happy.

They didn’t go home - instead they drove into Boston to go to Anna’s apartment, because her husband had a work thing so Anthony would be watching her kids until they got home. Nicholas was picked up from nursery school on the way.

Names were so stupid, Anthony couldn’t help thinking. His sister’s kids were Natashenka, Maryana and Kolya, but everyone knew them as Natasha, Maryanne and Nicholas. He was Anton, but usually called Anthony. Why couldn’t they just be Russian? There shouldn’t be anything wrong about being Russian. It’s not like they were Chinese. Even his son - Nora had picked Shaun’s first name, but he actually had two middle names. So Anthony’s father called him Matvey Antonovich instead. His son and his nephew and his nieces would all grow up with two first names, the way he and his sister and brother had. He didn’t think he’d have any more kids with Nora, not just because of money but also because he couldn’t stand the idea of putting that onto a second child. It was terribly unfair.

“Uncle Anton, please can I watch TV?” Nicholas asked, in already-perfect Russian even though he was just four years old. Shaun’s was a little stunted because his mother only spoke English.

“Sure, do you need a snack to go with it?”

“Uh-huh! They live over the fridge!”

Anthony sat his son and his nephew on the couch with a box of Fancy Lad’s, leaving the door unlocked for when Natasha and Maryanne got home from fourth grade. The boys would be happy with the television and Nicholas’ toys, while the girls would probably paint their nails, read, and do whatever marginal homework they’d been assigned.

In the meantime, he called the captain of his fire brigade.

“Engine 10 Ladder 25, Kells speaking.”

“Hey cap, it’s Kostin.”

“Afternoon, Kostin, what do you need?”

“I wanted to ask about… signing on full-time, instead of just on a volunteer basis.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “Your timing is perfect, Kostin, two positions opened up this week. Let’s see… Donovan and Leblanc were transferred to other departments. It looks like we’ve filled one of the slots already, but the other’s still open. Can you come in tomorrow morning to my office? We’ll sort out the paperwork and get you set up for a full-time position.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll be there.”

“Excellent. We’ll see you there, then.”

“Thank you, sir. Have a good rest of your day.”

Nora was going to kick his ass.

* * *

Showing up at his department the next morning at 9:00, Anthony was grateful his wife didn’t rip him a new one after he’d gotten home from watching his sister’s kids. Instead she’d broken out the distressed look she’d perfected from every time he’d re-enlisted, and asked him a very strange question.

_“Anton, are you… happy?”_

_“What? Of course I am. I’ll just be happier if I do this instead of catching rays at Mass Fusion.”_

_“That’s not what I meant, love.”_

_“Then what did you mean?”_

_Nora shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind. If this is what you really want, I won’t stop you. Just be careful, okay?”_

_“I will, I’m always careful. I’ll always come home to you and Shaun in one piece.”_

Entering Captain Kells’ office, he wasn’t surprised to see the shift lieutenant - Gavil - also present. There was a third man he didn’t recognize, presumably the guy filling the other full-time slot. Anthony didn’t think he’d seen this fireman before and couldn’t help comparing - they both had black hair, brown eyes, and scarred faces; they were about the same height. The similarities ended there. Anthony was strong enough for the job, but this guy was jacked. He also looked like he didn’t know how to smile.

Holding out a hand: “Anthony Kostin.”

His hand was shook curtly, once, before being released. “Jacob Danse.”

“Alright, gentlemen, let’s get this over with so we can get back to it. Kostin, you can start tomorrow once this has been sent to the battalion chief. Danse, you’ll probably start Monday next week once everything checks out for you.”

It was a boring hour and a half, most of it stuff Anthony had already gone through when he’d first started volunteering. It would be a little more different than he’d thought - now he’d have a uniform instead of whatever clothes he wore whenever he got called in for an emergency, and he wouldn’t just be here all day, but for 48 hours before spending the following 48 hours at home. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d have to make sure that he called Nora and Shaun at dinner time while he was on a shift, then.

“Alright, we’ll get you both uniforms,” Gavil announced once the tedium was finally over.

Anthony tried to get to know his new colleague.

“So where’d you transfer from?” He assumed Danse was transferring from another department, since he wasn’t going to be on a volunteer post and doing training.

“Boston. I’ve been here for about four and a half years. Before this I was a marine.”

“Oh, really? I spent ten years in the army. Where were you stationed?”

“DC originally. Then the war got worse and I was posted to a battleship off the coast near Shanghai.”

“I was in EOD. Right after I finished AIT Anchorage happened, so I ended up there first. Then we got sent to China… my unit got involved because the power armor kept getting stuck. The fusion cores were still problematic back then, too. Sometimes they’d overheat and explode. We ended up with a prototype combat armor that was first issued to you guys, actually. It was a better version and it saved my ass a few times, but God, it was heavy.”

“I wasn’t aware it was issued to other branches of the military.”

“Just to us, and in small quantities,” Anthony explained. Shirts were now being piled into their arms. “We needed something better than what the 11-bullet-catchers were wearing at the time.”

“The what?” Danse frowned.

“Infantry,” he clarified. It shouldn’t be as surprising as it was that the slang didn’t necessarily translate between the army and the marines. “They just had combat armor because they mostly got shot at. I spent every day trying not to get blown the hell up.”

Several pairs of pants and a sturdy belt for both of them, and then their feet were getting measured for boots.

“Did you ever have to serve on the pipeline?” Danse asked quietly.

“No. I heard about it, though. I did eventually get sent back to Alaska to help disarm a lot of Chinese emplacements once they were captured. It makes me glad fusion technology got such a boost… if we were still stuck with oil, or if coolant was still that big of a problem, who knows where we’d all be right now. Probably nothing good could’ve come of that.”

“What rank did you achieve before you returned to civilian life?”

“Sergeant First Class. I was in charge of a platoon for three years. I wanted to re-enlist again, but my son was going to turn one and I wanted to be around for my family. It made my wife happy, too. At least until I became a fireman. Then she started worrying again. What about you?”

“Gunnery Sergeant.”

“So we’re equal, then,” Anthony grinned, remembering after a second that a Gunny was also an E-7. “Why’d you leave?”

“Medical discharge.”

That made him frown internally - Danse was well enough to work full-time on a fire brigade, he was obviously strong and more than fit. “Medical discharge” in this context probably meant shell-shock. But Anthony didn’t say anything about that. He just smiled and kept being friendly.

“Well, it’s good to have you here, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Thanks.”

 

That night, Anthony and Denis ended up going to Bobrov’s to celebrate him quitting Mass Fusion to join the fire brigade full-time. His brother-in-law had introduced him to this bar awhile back, which was run by two Russian brothers and had the best vodka in Boston.

“Vadim! We need to mark the occasion!” Denis announced as they came to the counter. Here, Denis and Anthony could shout in Russian as loud as they wanted, because everyone else who came here was Russian, too. “This man puts his life in danger every day for people who hardly deserve it, he could use some drinks!”

Anthony laughed. “It’s not always like that, but thank you.” A triple of Surkov was slid over to each of them and they toasted before tossing the liquor back. “Ugh. God. This stuff always knocks me on my ass…”

“You need more practice,” Vadim insisted.

“I’m fine, I’ll just have to stay sitting for awhile.”

Denis ordered himself a double to follow his triple and grinned at Anthony. “So has your wife thrashed you for this? Anichka’s seriously considering it.”

“Between the two of them I’ll be beaten within an inch of my life,” he snorted. Using American idioms in Russian speech always sounded funny even when he wasn’t being soaked in vodka by the slightly-alcoholic neurologist. “I remember being a kid and my father broke both bones in his forearm on a call… my mother practically murdered him on the spot when he got home in a cast.”

“Oh, there’s that, too. Have you called your mother yet to tell her?”

“No. But I’m going to, and when I do it’s almost certain she’ll make me drive over for a visit, drown me in tea and try to talk me out of it. And then my father will tell her she’s being too protective and they’ll bicker about it for an hour.”

Anthony tossed some money on the counter, receiving another shot of Surkov and an open-face sandwich in return. He sipped on the alcohol after swallowing his sandwich in about two bites.

“Anichka’ll get over it eventually,” Denis remarked, breaking out a pack of Grey Tortoise cigarettes. Anthony always wondered about that - his brother-in-law made money hand over fist, but smoked a budget brand for some reason. “So, I also wanted to discuss something with you.”

“Alright.” Anthony took the one offered him from the pack and lit up as well.

“When the kids have Christmas vacation from school, we’re planning a trip to Leningrad for a few days to see my grandmother. We were wondering if you, Nora and Shaun would like to come with us.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” he agreed. “I’ve only been once… I think I was nine at the time. It’ll be good for my son, his Russian can use some help. The only thing is I might not get time off from the fire brigade. I’ll see if I can, though.”

* * *

Anthony spent the next few days puzzling not only over his possible upcoming trip to the Soviet Union with his family, but also about Nora’s question. Why did she ask him if he was happy? He wasn’t really, but he did his best to pretend that he was. He still hadn’t told her about the constant cheating during his deployment, of course, and he couldn’t think of any reason why she’d think he wasn’t content with his life. Hell, for the most part, _Anthony_ couldn’t come up with a reason why he wasn’t content.

Then the following week came, and with it the ex-marine made his debut as a member of the Cambridge Fire Department. Things got complicated in a hurry.

Because of the two-in-two-out rule, Anthony got paired up with Danse during their shifts, and they also ended up in the same bunk bed. With Danse on the top bunk, Anthony got no sleep, because his compatriot tossed around all night and it shook the whole bed. Halfway through their second shift together, they ended up switching bunks at Anthony’s request.

Danse was at least a good worker. Of course he was - that was true about anyone with a military background, at least anyone who’d served honorably. They both did as they were told to the best of their abilities and didn’t whine about it in the process. They quickly became a competent team, efficient at extracting victims from crashed cars and bringing attack lines into buildings as effectively as possible.

Off the fireground or away from the accident scene, though, Danse was a little cold and closed off. He didn’t really talk about his service in the marines, he barely made conversation at all in fact. He definitely wouldn’t discuss anything about his life before the military. It only reinforced Anthony’s suspicion that his new comrade-in-arms had some kind of psychological issue left over from combat.

So, after dinner one night, Anthony managed to dig up a chess set and all but dragged Danse to the table for a game. Normally his compatriot would spend the evening watching the national news in silence.

“How familiar are you with this game?” Danse asked as they sat down.

“Um… I know the rules. That doesn’t mean I’m good at it,” he admitted.

“I’ll try to be lenient with you, then.”

Watching the other man’s mannerisms for however many shifts now, Anthony noted that Danse seemed to have a more mild version of whatever undiagnosed problem kept his younger brother confined to a mental hospital. Everything was straight and neat, Danse didn’t like getting slapped on the back or high-fived by other firemen, he wouldn’t let different food touch each other on his plate during meals. And now, playing chess, even with a promise to go easy Danse was obviously calculating the next five moves in advance. He couldn’t turn off his meticulous brain… maybe that’s why he had a medical discharge.

Anthony decided maybe this was a gentle way to bring it up.

“How long since you’ve been out of the corps?”

“Several years. Roughly the same amount of time since you left the army.”

“You don’t talk about it much.”

“There are parts I’m not proud of,” Danse admitted softly, murdering another one of Anthony’s pawns. “For a time, towards the end, I was stationed on the pipeline. Some of the orders given were… ludicrous at best.”

Anthony cluelessly moved another piece. “I had an easy time re-adjusting once I got back home, but I know it’s hard on most people. It was probably difficult for you if it wasn’t your choice.”

“I… what made it easier for you?”

“My family,” he answered. It was mostly true. “I missed my parents and my sister. My son was born while I was in Alaska the second time. I wanted to see him grow up. And Anna’s kids… they’re so cute, and I get to be the fun uncle. I load them up on sugar before turning them back over to my sister and Denis. What about you? You’re a handsome guy, you must be married.”

What in God’s name had possessed him to say that?! Anthony started mentally punching himself in the face.

“I’m not. There’s nobody.”

“What about your family?”

“I’m an orphan.”

Well, a lot of things about Danse suddenly made an unfortunate amount of sense. “Your war buddies, then? Did you keep in contact?”

“I wasn’t able to. My discharge was sudden enough that when I realized I should’ve asked for contact information I was already on the plane home.” Danse sighed. “Check.”

Anthony moved his king. “I had a friend… Leon. He was given a medical discharge for shell-shock. Almost the second he found out about this, he… well, he died. I would’ve stopped him. But I was ninety seconds slow.” He paused, watching Danse checkmate him and ultimately resetting the board so he could get his ass kicked a second time. “Look. Most of the guys here didn’t serve. Kells was in the air force, but obviously you can’t really go to him for anything. So if you want to talk or to sit around without talking… I get it.”

There was a pause before Danse nodded.

“I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. Alright… think you could actually go easy on me this time? Last time you weren’t trying hard enough to go easy on me.”

Danse snorted an almost-laugh; it was the most humor Anthony had ever seen on his face.

“I’ll do my best. But you’re clearly terrible at this.”


	3. October 2083

“I’m ready, Papa!” Shaun yelled as he ran out of his bedroom.

“Good, let me see,” Anthony insisted.

His son was dressed as Captain Cosmos, an orange jumpsuit with a plastic dome helmet and even a little ray-gun. In his other hand wasn’t one of those puny candy buckets that looked like a pumpkin - it was a pillowcase. Anthony had always needed one trick-or-treating as a kid to hold all the loot.

“When do I get to eat the candy?”

“Once you get home. But remember, you need to eat it all before Christmas, or Santa won’t bring you any candy for your stocking because you’ll already have some.”

“Okay, Papa!” Shaun’s bright smile indicated that he’d have no such problem.

The three of them piled into the car. Shaun was going trick-or-treating with his cousins in Boston while Nora, Anthony, Anna and Denis went to a party. It wasn’t one of those ridiculously upscale doctors’ parties that Denis had to go to all the time, though - this was a bunch of Nora’s work friends from CIT having a party in their office on the campus. Personally, Anthony would rather be prying apart a wrecked car or trying to escape a structural collapse than have to go to a damn party, but he’d suffer through it for Nora without griping. There would probably be snacks and alcohol anyway.

As soon as they got there it was Nora showing him off to Penny and Betsy: this was her husband the war hero, now a domestic hero who ran into burning buildings for a living. For all the carrying on she did about how dangerous his job was and how much it kept her up at night, she sure was quick to brag to her friends about him.

After consuming his own weight in vodka and horderves only to go home and stay up late helping Shaun count out his treats, he woke up the next morning to swallow more aspirin than he probably should and brush his teeth six times to hide his breath before going to work. November first - his father’s birthday. He should call tonight during a lull.

“You look like you got hit by a bus,” Dave Seguin commented during a tedious equipment check that morning.

“My wife took me to an office party. Then I had to help my son go through his spoils,” Anthony chuckled. “I may actually still be drunk.”

“You look it,” Dave snickered.

Nearby, Danse was filling air cylinders from the cascade tanks and obviously listening in (no matter how hard he tried to appear like he wasn’t paying them any mind). He looked exhausted, too, but not for the reasons Anthony was. Actually, he’d been noticing that about his friend more and more with each passing shift. The dark circles never went away from his eyes, which were always a little dulled by fatigue.

Anthony tried very hard to concentrate on his work, but for some reason Danse was just on his brain right now. Nora sometimes said he had a little bit of a savior complex, and right now he thought she might be right. He wanted to help his friend so badly, but he didn’t know what he could do.

The feeling persisted until lunch. Career firemen were usually good cooks - they had to be, spending this much time away from their wives, and today Elias Vernon was at the counter. Spinach salad, creamed chipped beef and bread rolls that he’d brought from somewhere. Maybe his mother made them for him to take to work. It wasn’t what Anthony would’ve made, but then Anthony was the exception to this rule; he couldn’t cook at all, aside from sandwiches and maybe scrambled eggs.

The reason Anthony was only worrying about Danse until lunch wasn’t because he got distracted by well-made food. It was because just as they were sitting down to eat, the alarm sounded and they had to mobilize.

Everyone jumped into their rubber bunker gear, with metal-toed boots and cowhide gloves and leather helmets. It wasn’t that long of a drive, just up the road to some industrial building. They were the first brigade to arrive on the scene and right away Kells was yelling at them: this was possibly a major incident because of its location, other departments would be arriving, they needed to do an assessment.

There was a statue of a Stingray fighter-bomber out front of the complex, and employees in technical clothing were running from the entrance. Anthony yanked his air cylinder on over his bulky coat, anticipating the order. Dave and Elias were already hooking up lines before they could even hear other sirens approaching.

More barked words from the captain: Anthony and Danse needed to advance a line inside, because it sounded like the fire was in the offices on the first floor but they couldn’t be sure. None of the employees knew who’d pulled the alarm or why, exactly, it had been pulled. There were only rumors. People could be trapped. Seconds could count.

Danse was bigger, so he led with the nozzle while Anthony dragged the hose closely behind. Everything was in their way - furniture, workers, doors. They wore masks even though there was no smoke visible so far.

A man ran over to them: “Why are you over here? It’s a fuel spill! It’s down in the testing area!”

“Shit,” Anthony hissed into his air mask.

They immediately retreated with the worker in tow. This meant special equipment: chemical foam instead of water, aluminized bunker gear because rocket fuel burned hotter than most combustibles (not that Anthony thought they could survive if the fuel hit autoignition and torched everything around it), fresh air cylinders just in case even though it’d only been a few minutes. The ArcJet employee turned over his access badge to Anthony, because they couldn’t bring him with them.

“If that rocket fuel catches with us in there, we might as well be wearing raincoats,” Danse commented, echoing his previous thoughts as they made their way in as fast as they could. “It’s unfortunate he couldn’t provide us with more details.”

“Well, then let’s get there in time to stop it catching fire,” Anthony replied as he pulled the attack line along behind them.

It was an annoying task trying to make it to the testing area, because the halls weren’t labeled the best and there was nobody they could ask for help now the staff had finished evacuating the building. They managed eventually, though, and once there, it was just another combat zone - the training kicked in, so ingrained it might as well be instinct.

Identify the threat: transport cart tipped over, fuel barrel cracked, close proximity to other barrels. This could cause a catastrophic explosion. Now act: blanket the spill and the barrels in Class B foam, stopping vapors from releasing to mix with air and catch fire.

Danse was a surgeon with the hose nozzle. There wasn’t any delay, just a precise smothering action with aerated chemical fluids. It took Anthony a moment to understand why they’d been called instead of a hazmat team. This was the room where rocket engines got tested. Any careless spark could set off the spilled fuel, and in here, there were more than enough things to potentially give off that spark. There hadn’t even been an actual fire here, but there easily could’ve been. ArcJet might’ve been razed if they’d been ten seconds too slow. A couple hundred people would’ve gotten maimed or killed.

Anthony went for his radio and lifted his mask enough to clear his mouth: “Firefighter Kostin to Captain Kells, danger of combustion has been mitigated. The fuel spill was contained to the testing room in the lower levels.”

They had to stand around for a few minutes so that the police could come do a cursory investigation, because this was a major near-miss and had to be looked into. Two officers eventually showed up with the facility manager following close behind - he was fuming, while the cops just seemed fairly bored. They didn’t care about this stuff when lasers were found illegally in cars and chems were transported across state lines and other, more exciting things could be taking place on their watch.

The annoying thing about chemical foam was that it tended to be slightly corrosive, so that meant when they got back to the station they had to clean out the hoses and equipment before they could finally have their lunch.

“We did really well,” Elias commented as he re-heated their food. “Good response time, stopped an explosion. How much you guys wanna bet Gavil will still find something to bitch us out for?”

“It seems like you fail to understand his position,” Danse answered. It was surprising - he didn’t usually join idle conversation around the table. “Lieutenant Gavil only finds fault with you when an aspect of your performance on the fireground is sub-par. Providing you’ve done your job correctly and thoroughly, he won’t have a problem with you.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Elias snorted. “I swear he’s got some kind of personal issue with me.”

Anthony decided not to put in his two cents’ worth on this one. Elias was alright at his job, and he certainly tried, but he wasn’t terribly bright most of the time.

“Hey, not now, guys,” Dave insisted. “Let’s just eat, okay?”

Right on time, Brian Voracek and Jerry Gallagher sat with them as the food was being dished up; they’d been washing the truck. The routines were already predictable to Anthony, having been on the brigade full-time for just under two months. Dave and Tim Hunter started one of their endless disputes about baseball; Elias complained about Gavil some more; Jerry talked about his girl of the week; Brian pulled out his textbook to study for the lieutenant’s exam even while he ate; Theo Walsh yammered on about some movie he’d seen with his nephew; Danse was silent, of course, carefully eating and not letting his food touch on his plate. Anthony wondered if he was listening to everyone or if he went off into his own little world when he was like this.

After lunch, while the others were working out or bickering about sports, Danse and Anthony dug out their cards. They’d eventually decided that chess was a pointless bust and had graduated to children’s card games like Crazy Eights, because Anthony could actually win sometimes.

“Elias did make somewhat of a good point earlier,” Danse offered.

“How so?” Anthony asked as he set down his card and changed the suit.

“We were quite on-point as a unit at ArcJet. The scenario could’ve turned out much worse if anyone’s reactions or situational awareness had been off.”

“You shouldn’t think about things like that,” he told Danse. “The what-ifs, the hows, they whys. It makes people crazy. We did a good job. Our training didn’t fail us. Even if it did, there’s no going back and changing things, so you can’t dwell on it.”

“That fuel could’ve exploded and killed us both. Nobody would miss me, but you’ve got a family to take care of. I don’t have a choice but to think of these things.”

“Okay. A, we’d all miss you if you died, and B, the fact remains that we _didn’t_ die. You don’t have to think about it, trust me.” Anthony frowned, glancing up from his cards. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“I… suppose so, yes.”

“Was your medical discharge on psychological grounds?”

Danse didn’t always look at people to begin with, but now Anthony could tell he was avoiding it deliberately. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“A friend of mine was killed while we were stationed off Shanghai. He’d been taken as a POW and they were probably pressing him for information, but if I know Cutler he’d talk their ears off about anything and everything except whatever it was they were asking about. The POW camp was eventually liberated, and there was a communal grave for the captives they’d executed. He’d been dead for awhile, and… we only identified him because he’d managed to swallow one of his dog-tags. They found it during the autopsy.”

Anthony nodded slowly, putting his cards down on the table. It wasn’t likely their game would keep going after this. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s unfortunate and it happens,” Danse muttered. “We heard reports all the time. But those were other units, in other areas. I wasn’t prepared to lose one of my brothers-in-arms. I tried to learn from the experience, and to understand that this was an event that could potentially happen to anyone. But the first time it happened to me, it was my best friend. The other four were all under my command, and they were killed by the decisions I made in the field. Eventually someone reported me to the CMO over chronic insomnia and I failed a psychiatric evaluation. They discharged me after that.”

“So you’ve still got five deaths weighing you down,” Anthony gathered. “That’s why you think about getting killed on the fireground.”

“Not exactly. Some days I wouldn’t mind being killed. But I’m not going to let it happen to anyone in the brigade, because I’ve lost enough brothers already.” Danse reached for his wallet and pulled out two pictures: one was duochrome, the other a color photo. The black and white one was clearly older, because it was faded and yellowed and the edges were rough. “This is the two of us topside on the ship.” Danse and Cutler were just in fatigues, their plasma rifles slung over their backs. Their arms were over each other’s shoulders and Danse was even smiling in the picture. “This is my unit… we’d just taken out a communications array outside the city.”

The marines were in the chunky blue armor Anthony had suffered under during EOD operations, helmets in one hand and weapons in the other. Something was on fire behind them, but they clearly didn’t care, all grinning and making faces for the camera with their dog-tags hanging out from the necks of their wetsuits. Danse, on the other hand, wore his normal sullen expression and stood slightly apart from the others. On the back of the photo all their names were scrawled in blue ink.

“Do you still miss it?” Anthony wondered as he handed the pictures back.

Danse tucked them away into his wallet again before answering. “Sometimes. I don’t miss executing protesters in Canada, but… the structure of everything. The camaraderie. It’s why I became a fireman once I got back to the states. My therapist recommended it, actually.”

“Well, he was right. You’re a good fireman.”

“It’s debatable how much she gets right sometimes,” Danse muttered. He rubbed his eyes. “Nothing she says helps me sleep better.”

“Try eating stew before bed. It always puts me right out,” Anthony suggested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terminology:
> 
> [Aluminized bunker gear] Firefighters' clothing laced with metal fabric, which reflects extra heat off the firefighter. Usually used for aircraft fires.  
> [Class B foam] Chemical foam which can be used as a substitute for water when fighting fires; Class B is for chemicals/oil spills, and works by stopping vapors from escaping the material and fueling the fire.  
> [Autoignition] When a fuel source is heated up to the point where it will catch fire without a spark to ignite it.  
> [Combustion] Violently or explosively catching fire.  
> [CMO] Military abbreviation for chief medical officer.


	4. November 2083

“Hi, Papa!”

“Hey, kiddo, how was your day?”

“Why don’t you speak Russian?” Shaun asked instead of answering.

“Because I’m at work right now, so I’m not allowed,” Anthony lied into the phone. It was easier than trying to explain racism to a kindergartner. “How was your day?”

“We made costumes from paper bags, I got to be a Indian with feathers and everything! Pilgrims came from really far away, Papa! Then they made friends with Indians, so we have Thanksgiving!”

“Wow, that’s pretty cool, Shaun.” It was a little difficult answering in English when his son was speaking to him in Russian. His words were slipping a little, making him roll his Rs and put “soft marks” into a language where they weren’t even rendered. It made him sound kind of like Vadim Bobrov and he had to focus hard to put a stop to it.

“We’re going to _babushka_ ’s house for dinner. Can you come home from work and go with us?”

“No, kiddo, I can’t, but I wish I could. I’ll be home tomorrow, though, and we’ll watch Captain Cosmos together before dinner, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Good. Alright, give the phone back to mom.”

The phone changed hands on the other side. “Are you going to have a big meal at the station?”

“We’re going to try. There might be a call. Sometimes people’s stoves catch fire during this holiday.”

“Just be careful, love. No more rocket fuel spills like the one a few weeks ago.”

“Of course not. I have absolute control over everything that catches fire in Cambridge, so I’ll notify everyone that they’re not allowed to burn anything too dangerous on your behalf,” Anthony joked. “Besides, barely anything happened at the rocket fuel spill. It wasn’t even on fire.”

“It could’ve exploded and killed you, Anton!”

“God, you sound like one of my coworkers,” he snorted. “They’re putting in new safety measures to stop anything like that from happening again.” There was a distant shout of “Grub’s on!” from the kitchen. “Alright, I have to go, we’re eating. I’ll call my mother’s house in an hour or two if I’m not out on a call, okay? I love you.”

“I love you, too. Be safe, Anton.”

“I’ll do my best. Bye, Nora.”

“Bye.”

Anthony hung up the phone and sat in the kitchen with the others. For once, Gavil and Kells would be joining them during their meal (normally they ate in the office) and the radio was on so they could listen to the football game while they had their food. The cranberry sauce was canned and the stuffing was boxed, but there was enough turkey for all ten of them and essentially they were their own little family unit, eight brothers and two cranky dads who made them clean their gear after use and file maintenance reports on time.

“Alright, we have to do this, when I was a kid we always did this,” Brian insisted with a big grin. Everyone else grumbled in protest, so he went first. “I’m thankful for my kids. Eli, you’re next.”

Elias thought for a second. “Uh, I’m thankful for aspirin after a shift.” There were murmurs of agreement all around the table. “Cap?”

“I’m thankful most of you turn in your paperwork on time,” he deadpanned, which got most of them to laugh. “Lieutenant.”

“I’m thankful for the water department finally agreeing to inspect the hydrants instead of making us do it. Hunter.”

“Um,” Tim started, then stopped to think. “I’m thankful for baseball. Dave?”

“Same here. Jerry, your turn.”

“I’m thankful for my new girlfriend. Oh come on, guys, don’t look at me like that, Patty’s The One. I can tell I got it right this time, you’ll see! Theo.”

“I don’t care what the rest of you think, I’m thankful for football. Best sport in the world.”

“They’re just standing there the whole time, it’s always on a time-out,” Elias protested.

“Yeah, what do you call baseball, then? They move even less!”

“Guys, stop, you’ve both gone. Jake, your turn,” Brian interjected.

“I’m thankful our officers keep up with the regulations. All our gear is ready and working when we need it.”

There were groans and laughs at that, obviously because nobody believed him. Anthony did, though. He knew Danse meant every word of it.

“Okay, I’m last? Well, I’m thankful for my job, I guess. I’ve got all kinds of good friends sitting here with me and I get to wake up every shift and do something I love for a living. A lot of guys can’t say the same. Besides, 48-hour shifts get me out of my brother-in-law’s parties.”

They chuckled and agreed on the last statement before finally starting to dish food for themselves. The guys all yammered on about sports while Gavil and Kells talked mostly just to each other, probably about paperwork or fire codes or other topics that nobody else could possibly find interesting. Danse was having cranberry sauce and turkey, but no stuffing. Maybe he hadn’t gotten any.

Anthony reached over the bowl for him: “Did you want some?”

“I don’t care for it. Thank you, though.”

“Alright.” He started eating stuffing, because he had taken some. “After the shift, do you want to go out for drinks?” It made him sad that his friend had nobody to go home to for holidays.

“I don’t understand. You return to your family after a shift. Won’t they be expecting you?”

“I’ll just call them and say I’ll be home late.”

“I suppose I can… go out for drinks with you, Anthony. Am I right to assume this will involve us both becoming mildly intoxicated?”

He laughed. “Probably more than mildly. Didn’t you spend your downtime drinking in the military? We sure as hell did in EOD. There were times we probably would’ve gone crazy if we weren’t putting away bottle after bottle of Uisce Beatha… Ugh. If I never see another drop of whiskey it’ll be too soon.”

“Personally I prefer vodka or Gwinnett.”

“Me, too. My sister’s husband is always trying to load up everyone around him with Surkov. I think he doesn’t like to be the only one drinking it.”

He punctuated his statement with a swig of Nuka-Cherry. It made him think of Vim!, which he’d always preferred as a kid. The company went under a couple years back, but he hadn’t discovered that fact until they were in Maine for a camping trip. It made him a little sad that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy one of his childhood treats anymore.

Danse was frowning at him: “May I ask about something?”

“Sure.” Anthony went for more turkey as he said it.

“When you talk in your sleep, what are you saying? It doesn’t sound like real words.”

Even though he’d already finished swallowing, Anthony choked.

“Um… probably nothing important if I’m sleeping.” His hands started shaking, so he put down his utensils and braced them against the table for the time being. “I took other languages when I was in school, so that could be it.”

How long had this been going on? Anthony didn’t know he muttered in Russian while he slept. It made sense, he’d learned Russian before he’d learned English, but that didn’t make it a good thing. He wondered why he hadn’t been called out on it before now.

“What language?” Danse asked, looking curious but not suspicious.

“Well… I also speak Russian. When I was in the army, I wanted to be a translator, but I ended up in EOD instead because they wanted people who could speak Chinese. They already had enough translators for Russian.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Anthony had tried to become a translator first but had been rejected for that reason. And he had taken Russian in high school, because he knew he could pass the courses easily and it looked good on his transcript for college (even though he hadn’t gotten into Mass Bay U).

“But your son speaks it, too. I overheard it while you were on the phone.”

Anthony laughed nervously. “Um, look, let’s talk about this later, okay? We should finish eating in case there’s a call.”

It was a bad excuse and he knew it, but surprisingly Danse just nodded and went back to his food. He didn’t seem to know how badly Anthony was freaking out about this. He hadn’t been caught before and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do - the Soviet Union was still a communist country, after all. He could lose his job and be investigated over this and he knew it. Unfortunately, his reeling brain wasn’t coming up with any convincing lies, so he decided it had been a good idea to stall his friend for the time being.

* * *

“Talking about this later” ended up being after the shift, when they’d agreed to go drinking anyway. Anthony called Nora and informed her he’d be home late because he was going out with a friend, and then drove the both of them into Boston. He had an idea.

“Alright, so… this is where I usually go with Denis, because he takes me out drinking sometimes,” Anthony began. “Have you ever been here before?”

“No. I usually stay in my apartment when I’m not at work.”

“Okay, then.” They got out of the car and went into Bobrov’s. Entering the bar, the spoken conversation was almost entirely Russian around them, which prompted Danse to look confused. “These guys in here are all Russians. My sister’s husband is Russian, too, and he even still has some family over in Leningrad.”

“Did Denis teach your son Russian, then?”

“No. I did. Because my family is also Russian… but look, before you say anything, just watch these guys for a second. They sit at their tables, or hang around the bar, just having drinks and smoking like any other people. We’re just normal people like you.”

Danse made a face. “I wouldn’t have thought otherwise. Is there a point to this exercise or can we get to the alcohol?”

“Most people learning I’m Russian would try to turn me in,” Anthony replied.

“Why?”

“They think it makes me dangerous.”

His friend’s eyes rolled. “You served honorably in the military for over a decade, you’re a competent firefighter and I’ve never heard you say anything even vaguely resembling communist propaganda. I have no reason to consider you dangerous.”

Well, that was… refreshing. Anthony felt his anxiety drain at once. “It makes a lot of sense when you put it like that. Thank you. Just… please, don’t tell the guys about this. They might not be as okay with it as you are.”

“Alright, I won’t bring it up.”

Once at the counter, Vadim was a little wary of Danse at first until Anthony explained, and then the drinking commenced. It was immediately apparent that his friend was no stranger to the bottle, either, because from the look of things Danse could probably match Denis shot-for-shot. It was a little unexpected.

“So, Anton, you are going with family on trip soon?” Vadim asked as he brought them sandwiches and potato crisps between rounds of vodka.

“I can’t, I don’t have vacation time from the fire brigade yet,” he answered around his cigarette. “Denis said he’ll probably take everyone again next year, though, so I’ll go with them, then.”

“Is too bad,” Vadim shook his head. Listening to him talk in English was strange, and Anthony knew he was only doing it for Danse’s benefit. “Yefim and I are going this summer, to visit our mother.” He looked at Danse. “You like jokes, fireman?”

“I suppose.”

“Alright. Russian horror story: man comes into kitchen for breakfast, wife tells him, ‘We have eggs, bacon, orange juice, no vodka.’”

Anthony snickered but Danse just gave the bartender a blank look.

“It’s okay, he has no sense of humor,” he apologized on his friend’s behalf. “I’ve got a better one for you, Vadik. Two soldiers and a marine all die and got to heaven. They meet St. Peter: ‘Welcome to heaven. Before you go in, there’s just one thing we have to take care of first.’ He looks at the first soldier. ‘What would you like said about you at your funeral?’ ‘Well, I want to always be known as the best comrade-in-arms to my fellows. They’ll tell stories about how I cheered them up when they got Dear John letters and visited them in the infirmary.’ ‘Alright,’ says St. Peter, ‘it’s done.’ He looks at the marine. ‘What would you like said about you at your funeral?’ ‘I want to always be known as the most badass. I killed more Red Chinese than the rest of my unit combined, and died saving them by laying down on a grenade.’ ‘Alright,’ says St. Peter, ‘it’s done.’ He looks at the other soldier. ‘What would you like said about you at your funeral?’ The soldier has to think about that one for a second. Finally, he answers, ‘Well, at my funeral, I want everyone to point and say Look! He’s alive!’”

Vadim laughed pretty hard at that and even Danse managed a slight chuckle. Anthony grinned to them both and knocked back his next shot before going after a sandwich. The vodka must’ve loosened Danse up a bit, because he started talking finally.

“This scar across my eye is from a hand grenade, actually. The explosion cracked the lens of my assault helmet and I cut myself taking it off.”

“See this gash on my lip?” Anthony pointed. “I got it during an operation in one of those damn artillery encampments. We thought we’d taken it, but there was a platoon lying in ambush for us. I ended up in a knife fight and the guy went for my face, but I was quick enough and he just nicked my mouth.”

Danse seemed to be staring a little, but Anthony guessed it was the vodka soaking in. They both went for the potato crisps after that like the snack food had personally wronged them and needed to be punished for it.

“There’s a really big one on my back, too,” Anthony went on after he’d finished cramming his face. He signaled Vadim for another pair of shots. “I didn’t even know it was there… I mean… I know-know-knew I got hurt, but Nora din-didn’t find it ’til later, and that’s how I found out about it, too.”

Shit, he was drunk. The realization made him giggle to himself a little before tossing back his next helping of vodka. Anthony braced a palm on the surface of the bar to keep himself steady. Danse finally looked like he was feeling it, too, because his face was getting a little red while he lit his cigarette. That and he kept talking.

“There’s one on my sternum.” His friend pointed to the middle of his chest. “I was targeted by a sniper, but the armor we had was very well-designed. It went through my chest plate but was slowed enough that it only managed to gouge my skin.”

Anthony put money onto the counter and Vadim came over: “More to drink?”

“No, just sandwiches, we need to-to sober up so I c’n drive again and not cr-” He hiccuped. “-crash.”

“It seems you were right earlier,” Danse commented, making a grab for another sandwich. “We’ve become more than slightly intoxicated.”

“You think?” Anthony laughed. “Nor-Nora’s gonna thrash me wh’n I get home. It’s gonna be late…”

“It was a good decision, though,” Danse replied. “This can be counted as a successful team bonding exercise…” He took a bite of sandwich and started talking with his mouth full. “It wath more enjoyable than antithipated.”

“What, don’t you like me?” He pretended to be hurt for a second before he started laughing a little too hard.

“I like you very much, Anthony. Thank you for drinking with me.”

“No problem,” he managed through his hysterics.

Following their final shot, it took nearly an hour and a half before Anthony felt like he was good to drive again. He was stuffed, too, because he’d eaten six sandwiches and an entire can of potato crisps.

“Alright, back to the station?”

“Why?” Danse wondered.

“Well, don’t you have a car?”

“No. I take the bus to work.”

Danse lived in an apartment building near the police station. Once Anthony had dropped him off, he went straight home and thought carefully about what he would say if Nora got up in arms about him not coming back until after Shaun’s bedtime. Besides, he hadn’t explicitly told her he was headed out to a bar, so showing up in a rumpled uniform and stinking of vodka wasn’t going to earn him any points, either.

It didn’t turn out as a big explosion - it rarely did with Nora - but he could tell she wasn’t happy with him, and that she was confused because this wasn’t a normal pattern of behavior. In the shower afterwards, though, Anthony’s brain almost immediately switched tracks and he began questioning how smart it’d been for him to do this in the first place. Danse probably had other friends outside of work, and even though he avoided talking unless it was during a call or he got asked something, it could potentially come up somehow no matter how low of a chance that was. Anthony might’ve fucked himself over by doing this instead of just lying like he’d thought of doing in the first place.

On the other hand, it was a lie every day to pretend to everyone around him that he was happy with his life and not a complete fucking incompetent nervous wreck. It was a lie every time he looked at Nora and refused to think about all the cheating for a little over twelve years while he’d been in the army. Not having to lie about this to his friend was an enormous weight that he no longer had dragging him down at the neck.

That was when the fear rolled over him.

In the flashover of guilt and terror, Anthony almost turned off the shower still covered in soap. Because he was getting that tingly feeling in his chest again, the same as the one he’d had with Rusty. He got along so easily with Danse after such a relatively short amount of time, they were extremely competent together on the fireground, they hung out around the station between calls. Now they were going out drinking together after shifts. All of those things spelled trouble in the making.

Well, Anthony reasoned, he didn’t really have reason to think Danse was interested in him… except that he did. They talked to each other more than they did to the other fireman most days. There’d been a couple times after calls, when he’d had to shower and put on a clean uniform, that it’d seemed for a second that his friend had been looking him over a little. Earlier at the bar, talking about their combat injuries, Danse had been staring at his mouth just a few seconds too long. _“I like you very much, Anthony.”_

It made him think back again. In the army, things had started on one of the nights everyone _hadn’t_ been drinking an insane amount of whiskey. Russell Cameron had caught Anthony alone, they’d gotten to talking, and then things happened. For many years after that, either he went to Rusty or Rusty went to him for sex, and they never discussed it afterward. They hadn’t even known each other all that well in the beginning and they didn’t always get along during ops. With Danse, it was different than it had been with Rusty, because he and Anthony knew each other fairly well by now and they got along almost flawlessly. This was a strange feeling, one he didn’t think he’d encountered before.

God, what was he going to do now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian:
> 
> [Babushka] Grandma
> 
> The issue Anthony has with replying in English when Shaun is speaking Russian is a problem I have when I have to explain a Russian word to my boyfriend; I'll either fuck up and mispronounce the Russian word, or I'll fuck up the other way and start using Russian sounds in my English words. It's difficult trying to mix the two languages in the same sentence.
> 
> Danse overhearing Shaun talking to Anthony in Russian isn't because he was being nosy. Since I headcanon him with autism, he just heard it by accident because people with autism sense things differently than neurotypical people. I had to learn that it's rude to butt into a conversation two people are having all the way across the room even though I can hear everything they're saying.


	5. December 2083

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out REALLY long.

“I’m terribly sorry about this, sir,” Codsworth apologized again. “You must feel rather inconvenienced…”

“I don’t, there isn’t much for me to do today anyway,” Anthony shrugged. “I think you’ll have to fold your arms in to fit.”

With the robot in the car, he checked once again to make sure the corroded bolt was in his coat pocket before settling into the driver’s seat. That one tiny component had failed and now one of Codsworth’s limbs had entirely ceased to work, dangling limply and uselessly from its joint. The annoying thing was that he had to leave Cambridge and go all the way to the outlet at the Galleria for this, because it being a Sunday, Wattz was closed.

It went downhill from there. Sprocket informed him that this particular size of bolt was (infuriatingly) not in stock, so Codsworth would have to wait in sleep mode at the outlet until sometime next week after the holidays were over to get fixed. On top of this, the bill was outrageous for one little bolt, so Anthony got to drive back home to an empty house with nobody to wash his dishes and clothes for him. His family was all in Leningrad right now, undoubtedly enjoying themselves a hell of a lot more than he was, and his next shift wouldn’t start until tomorrow.

A boring day followed, with nothing good on tv and nobody around. By dinnertime, Anthony felt like he was losing his mind, but mercifully his mother called and informed him she’d be over on Thursday to visit since he hadn’t been able to go to Leningrad. She said she’d bring him some _pryaniki_ and they could have tea.

At least the next day wasn’t as dull, because he had to go to work. It immediately got him to missing his family, because that’s all anyone was talking about - Elias’ parents had once again supplied the food they’d be having while they were away from home over Christmas, Brian’s brother worked for a cigarette vendor and had donated three entire cartons to their shift, Dave’s mother had somehow managed to knit a scarf for everyone. Irony of ironies, Anthony’s turned out to be red and gold - the same colors of the Soviet flag.

The station had those tacky red and green garlands over all the windows and doorways, and as a joke somebody (probably Jerry) had hung up stockings with everyone’s names over their bunks. It was kind of surprising that the officers hadn’t put a stop to all this silliness, but even Kells and Gavil had some Christmas spirit - the captain had cards on his desk from his relatives and the lieutenant had a picture taped to the fridge that his youngest daughter had drawn for him of some firemen standing next to Santa.

And then… there was ex-Gunnery Sergeant Jacob Danse.

All this Christmas and family stuff hammering in that Anthony’s family was in the Soviet Union for Christmas while he was stuck in Cambridge didn’t hold a candle to how lonely his friend looked. This morning, since they weren’t out on a call, Danse was in the kitchen with a Nuka-Cola and a cigarette listening to something on the radio. He seemed like he could probably cry if he wasn’t a man and therefore too proud to do so.

It made Anthony kind of angry that there were eight other people here, completely oblivious and going about their day being happy without noticing that one of their own was suffering. So, undercurrent of sexual attraction be damned, he went into the kitchen and proceeded to sit down in a chair beside Danse, mimicking him with a cigarette and a soda.

“The scarves are goofy with our uniforms, huh?” Anthony remarked after a drag.

“My discipline is working very hard to stop me from indulging in alcohol while I’m on duty,” Danse grumbled, lighting a fresh cancer stick with the butt of the previous one.

“Do you remember your parents at all?” Anthony asked quietly.

“No.” Danse shook his head. “I grew up in a facility with about three times as many children as it was designed to hold. The staff weren’t terrible, but they were horrendously overworked. One told me when I was five that when I got bigger I should do something important with my life, and that I should always work as hard as I could. That’s the nearest to a parental figure I’ve ever gotten.”

And then his mouth was making words without his consent again: “My family is out of the country this week and even my robot’s in the shop to get fixed… why don’t you just hang out with me between shifts? Then we won’t just have to be by ourselves over Christmas.”

Good God, was he trying to get his own ass in trouble! Anthony briefly imagined himself being shot for this, and it was unnervingly satisfying.

“I’ll accept your offer on the grounds that copious amounts of vodka or beer are consumed.”

“I’m forced to ask, are you an alcoholic?” Dammit, dammit, why couldn’t he stop this from happening?

“It’s entirely possible. There isn’t much else for me to do in my empty apartment besides drink. Otherwise I don’t sleep and I’d be forced to come into work without adequate rest.”

“That’s fucking terrible,” Anthony blurted out, stubbing out his cigarette butt into a nearly overflowing ashtray.

“It’s the reality of my existence.”

The alarm went off then, stopping Anthony from saying anything else that would make things worse for himself because they immediately ran for the pole with barely enough time for Danse to snuff out his cigarette. Boots, coats, gloves, helmets, and then the ten of them were rushing off to Boston for a five-alarm fire.

Having worked at one of Mass Fusion’s storage sheds for radioactive waste, Anthony figured he probably knew a little more than most of the firemen here, but that didn’t mean he understood what was going on. Words like “reactor output rupture” and “catastrophic electrical failure” and “coolant loop in jeopardy” were being thrown around, none of which made sense to him. The only word he immediately placed was “fire.”

“Everyone needs to wear air cylinders, even outside the building,” the battalion chief, Maxson, barked at them. He was then screaming orders into his radio, probably at one of the units already inside the facility.

“Danse, Kostin, Voracek, Gallagher, run two attack lines into the first floor,” Kells ordered, reaching for his own air cylinder. “Vernon, Seguin, prepare a supply of Class A foam. Hunter, Walsh, you’ll be on standby for rapid intervention. Kostin, Gallagher, Seguin, Walsh, you all have radios. Stay in constant radio contact with me and Gavil at all times.”

The street was completely impassable around them as they geared up with hoses and breathing apparatus - fire engines, a police blockade to keep spectators clear, ambulances going back and forth between Mass Fusion and Mass Bay Med with injured nuclear technicians.

Anthony was about to put his mask on when a worker in a hazmat suit but no helmet came running up to Kells - “You all need to take two of these before you go into the building. They’ll protect you for about an hour, after that you take two more.” - and stuffed a red bottle of pills into the captain’s gloved hand.

After choking down some of this so-called “Rad-X,” Anthony and Danse were dragging a hose into the building. At first it was eerily similar to ArcJet, because they were immediately redirected to a lower level of the complex. This time, though, there sure as hell was a fire going on when they got there, as well as about fifteen other firemen who were all spraying chemical foam. A few were also being directed by workers in hazmat suits, jury-rigging their hoses to pump water into some kind of pipe system.

The control area for the reactor was enormous, but with so many people working it was hard to move around. There was an instrument panel on fire, so Danse hit that first with the foam before they moved towards the glass to get a better look. The reactor was sealed off, with the only access point closed by mag-locked doors. They set down their attack line and ran over to one of the workers.

“How do we get in there?”

“You can’t!”

“It’s on fire, we need to go in,” Danse insisted.

“You can’t bring in a hose, the airlock has to seal.”

“We’ll use extinguishers,” Anthony replied.

“Alright, look, you also can’t go in dressed like that. You need a suit, or else the radiation will cook you alive. Follow me.”

The nuclear technician had to rummage for a moment until he found hazmat suits that would fit them. Anthony was a little nervous about this - hazmat suits weren’t rated for firefighting most of the time. They could get badly burned if they weren’t careful. The suit was a little baggy on Anthony, and instead of supplied air it had a chemical rebreather system of potassium superoxide - this could give him over an hour of breathable oxygen without having to switch out the regenerative canister.

They both took an extinguisher in each hand (that way they’d have spares) and entered the airlock. It made Anthony feel a little like an astronaut, fully covered in a bright orange rubber suit with a bulbous helmet.

“We’ll have to exercise caution,” Danse warned. “This appears to be an electrical fire and there’s water pooling under the stairs here.”

“The extinguishers are dry CO2,” Anthony pointed out as the other side of the airlock hissed open. Immediately something on his chest was crackling wildly. He looked down and noticed there was a small Geiger counter velcroed to each of their suits, and the needle for his had immediately flown off the chart. “We need to hurry, that guy wasn’t wrong about us getting cooked.”

They both started running, headed for the incipient fires in the cabling. There was a ruptured pipe serving as an outlet from the reactor, which was where the water on the lower floor had come from. Anthony failed to notice this until he got doused with hot fluid. He didn’t get immediately burned, though, so he kept going and got to work. He twisted the valve at the top and had to more or less pour the dry CO2 powder onto the cabling, but it wasn’t difficult to smother a small fire before moving on to the next one.

As they were finishing up, technicians had also entered the reactor chamber in the same hazmat suits with tools and pipe repair kits. Anthony and Danse carried their extinguishers back into the airlock and were decontaminated, and once back in the control room it looked like things were calming down. The frantic shouting had stopped, at least.

Anthony realized he had a headache creeping onto him as he shed the hazmat suit and put his bunker gear back on. He radioed Kells to say they were returning to the exterior before helping Danse gather the hose, thinking about strange things - there’d been a pins-and-needles feeling on his face and chest the whole time he’d been in there, and after he’d taken off his mask to don the hazmat suit there was a weird metal taste in his mouth. His chest and left arm were a little achy where he’d been sprayed with water from the reactor.

Getting back to the station, Elias, Dave, Tim, Theo, Kells and Gavil were fine. Jerry and Brian were a little pale, though, and so was Danse. Anthony was doing his absolute best not to throw up each time the truck hit a pothole. His headache was getting worse and he still tasted metal on his tongue a little, which didn’t help things. His helmet and boots felt heavier than normal as he stepped off the side, but he didn’t complain about it or try to get out of helping clean up the equipment.

As he was rolling hoses and still putting every spare drop of his waning energy into not being sick, a Pick-R-Up drove over to them and two men jumped out. They wore the same type of hazmat suits Anthony had borrowed earlier, one holding a clipboard and the other with a yellow Geiger-Muller counter in his hand. Their pickup truck had the Mass Fusion logo on it, so he guessed they were doing some kind of follow-up.

“Can we help you, gentlemen?” Jerry asked, looking a lot less strong than his voice sounded.

“What are we getting so far?” the first worker asked the second worker, completely ignoring the fireman’s question.

“Slightly above average…” Worker 2 then walked into the garage and pointed the probe of the detector at the two fire engines. “You need to wash your trucks.”

Worker 1 also came in without asking first. “How many in your station?” He was scribbling things on his clipboard.

“Ten. There’s us and two officers,” Dave answered.

“Call in your officers, please. We need to check everyone.”

They were ultimately forced to stand in a line with their bunker gear piled up at their feet. Of course, the six men who hadn’t actually gone into the building were fine, and their gear was all fine. By the time Worker 2 had gotten to Jerry and almost bolted away from him at the machine gun-clicking of his detector, Danse had actually sat on the floor and Anthony was seriously considering whether he should mimic that action. The Geiger counter rattled equally loudly at Brian, and then got pointed to Danse - the clicking was so rapid it had graduated to a squeal. Turned to Anthony, that squeal became a scream.

“Were you two the ones in the reactor chamber?” Worker 1 demanded.

Anthony opened his mouth to answer - and was immediately throwing up all over himself, his contaminated bunker gear and the surrounding floor. He almost collapsed on the spot, but Danse had managed to get back up long enough to catch him as his legs seemed to disappear out from under him.

“You four need to come with us right now,” Worker 1 insisted.

An ambulance was called and during the wait the pair of Mass Fusion employees explained to Kells and Gavil that the dirty bunker gear had to be buried in concrete and replaced, not only did the engines need to be very thoroughly washed but the garage floor as well, and the firemen who hadn’t gone inside still needed to shower carefully with plenty of soap but without scrubbing.

They weren’t taken to Kendall Hospital, but rather to Mass Bay Med, which was a bigger hospital and had more resources… or something like that. Anthony wasn’t really paying attention to the paramedics. He was too busy puking a second time and trying not to pass out, but still somehow managed to notice that Danse was frantically wiping his nose on the back of his hand because it had started gushing blood.

Anthony and Danse were both rushed out of the emergency room almost as soon as they were brought in and taken through a series of halls and elevators to a ward in radiology. Jerry and Brian were left in emergency, though, because they weren’t as bad off apparently.

An IV of something such a bright shade of orange it was practically glowing, then an exchange transfusion - the radiologist explained this would get rid of his contaminated blood and replace it with clean donations. Then a set of giant needles were stabbed into his breastbone and the back of his pelvis because they needed to test his marrow, and the pain was indescribable. In the next bed over, Danse was undergoing an identical round of torment, but didn’t have the added layer of suffering that was having to vomit every ten minutes.

Eventually Anthony did end up passing out, and when he came to again it was several hours later and he was on a normal IV. After throwing up repeatedly, the metal taste was finally gone, but now he was sweating and yet cold at the same time. The lights were all off in the ward and there was black behind the window, so he guessed it was night. Wonderful. He was awake when nobody else was, probably had a fever, his mouth was dried out and the bandages taped over the holes drilled into his body were itchy.

“Jake,” he hissed, rolling his head to the side. Nothing. “Jake!” a little louder.

Danse snorted in and grumbled, “What?”

“Are you up?”

“What? No. I’m not sure.” He sounded loopy. “The painkillers they have in this facility are exceptional.”

“I think I passed out.”

“You lost consciousness because… I don’t know why you lost consciousness.” Danse coughed. “I think we’re sick.”

“You’re high on Med-X.”

“It’s entirely possible. I’m extremely itchy.”

“Are you cold, too?”

“Somewhat. I’ve been told…” Danse trailed off.

Anthony looked over and saw his friend starting to fall back asleep. “Jake, wake up, don’t make me lay here in the dark by myself!”

Shit, he was high on Med-X, too. The only other thing that could make him say such stupid things was alcohol.

“Huh? Oh.” Danse yawned. “I’ve been told… I took a dose somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred rem of gamma radiation. So I’ll be feverish and ill until the RadAway has finished cleansing me. The good new is…” Another yawn. “The good news is I didn’t require a marrow transplant. But they gave you one. You were still unconscious.”

“That’s nice…” Anthony commented. His eyes wouldn’t stay open. “How much did I get?”

“They didn’t say.”

The next thing Anthony noticed was that the lights had come back on and a spak was being injected into his fluid line. Within five seconds, he could feel some strength coming back into his body. Then there was a large dose of Med-X and he was floating on his bed.

“Are you awake, Mr. Kostin?”

“Ugh…”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the doctor asked.

“Two.”

“How many now?”

“Four.”

“And now?”

“Thumb.” He’d seen this done in the military once, when a private had been concussed and the platoon sergeant had kind of an inappropriate sense of humor about it. “When can I go home?”

“Wednesday most likely. You’ve shown a good response to the RadAway and there’s no early signs of rejection from the bone marrow transplant. You will have to have a stim injection each morning for five days after you’re discharged, but you should be back to normal fairly quickly.”

“Can I go back to work?”

“Yes, but you should have a checkup with your primary doctor sometime next week just to make sure things are still going smoothly.” The radiologist pulled over a chair. “From the tests we ran, we estimate that you absorbed three hundred and ninety rem of gamma radiation. For the record, four hundred rem is the median lethal dose.”

“That’s nice,” Anthony mumbled, sinking into the pillow. “I think I’m still high… or I’m high again. Do I have a fever?”

“You did, but we’ve given you something to bring it down.”

“Okay.” He was floating, and even though he was itchy again nothing could make him move right now. “Jake’s right. Your painkillers are exceptional. Is he still here? He’s my friend. I want to be near him.”

“He’s been taken down the hall for another test, we’re making sure his radiation level was adequately lowered by the medications.”

“Good. My wife’s not at home right now, but you shouldn’t call her anyway, she’ll be mad if she knows I got hurt at work…”

The doctor chuckled. “Alright, I won’t. Try to get some rest.”

* * *

Going home the next morning was annoying, because he had to take a (very expensive) cab to the station so he could get his car. But, as previously hashed out, Danse was going home with him. Just thinking that made him excited, anxious, slightly lustful, and terrified - all at the same time.

“You have a rather small domicile for three people and an automated domestic servant,” Danse commented as they went inside.

“It’s not bad,” Anthony shrugged. “Codsworth hasn’t complained, anyway. Besides, we couldn’t afford a bigger one even if we wanted to.”

“It was only an observation. My apartment is two rooms.”

They went into the kitchen and sat at opposite ends of the table, each with a spak in hand. Anthony had been revived with these things plenty of times in the army, and mercifully it only had to go into his arm instead of his fucking sternum, but that didn’t mean he was jumping for joy at the idea of stabbing a giant needle full of drugs into his body. He knew it was necessary for him to recover from the treatments he’d been given in the hospital, but… it was a still a giant needle, and the last thing he was interested in after holes had been drilled through his bones was yet more pain.

“You seem hesitant,” Danse offered, eyeing him.

“I don’t like these things and I never have,” Anthony explained with more than a little discomfort. “They’re fucking painful and they make my teeth itch.”

Danse frowned. “You’ve previously detailed surviving explosions and having your lip cut open with a trench knife.”

“Those were unexpected and I didn’t have to do it to myself.”

“Would you like help?”

“What?”

Now, Danse looked uneasy. He shuffled his own spak from hand to hand. “After one of my decisions killed one of my subordinates the first time, I talked with the corpsman assigned to my platoon and asked him to teach me some of the basics so that I could potentially help my squad-mates should the need arise. It seems… likely… that if you allow me to perform your injection, it won’t be as uncomfortable as it will be if you attempt to inject the medication yourself.”

Anthony sighed. It made a lot of sense, and also reinforced his decision to invite his friend over despite the potential issues that might arise. So he nodded and tried not to look too reluctant as he pulled off his overshirt, leaving just the short-sleeved cotton undershirt. Danse, to his credit, didn’t fuck around or anything, just swiped the inside of his elbow with alcohol and pushed the needle of the spak into the vein there. It was a lot less horrifyingly awful with his friend sticking him instead of having to do it on his own.

After that, Danse injected himself as calmly and professionally as he had Anthony, then capped the pointed ends and tossed the used needles into the garbage. There was a tingle in his spine as the chem cocktail started to take effect, and Anthony went to the living room couch just as his muscles started to spasm.

“I’m surprised you have such an aversion to pain,” Danse commented as he settled in the other corner of the couch. He wasn’t unkind about it, though. “Certainly you’ve suffered worse things.”

“Yeah, I have, but… I never liked getting vaccinations as a kid, either. Besides, they drilled holes in my chest to get at my bone marrow. I’m still a little achy from that.”

“It’s unfortunate that such drastic measures were needed,” his friend agreed, “but you said they determined your dose was extremely high. You might not have survived without those types of procedures.”

“I know,” Anthony nodded. “I just want to get back to normal, and I’m glad it’s mostly over with. Only four more of these awful things to go.”

“I only have two.”

“Lucky bastard.” Anthony untucked his shirt and pulled the bottom up, pointing to the gauze pad taped over the middle of his chest. “This was barbaric. Nuclear science is embedded into our national identity, why aren’t there better treatments for radiation sickness by now?”

“Well, I’ve heard that until a few decades ago, it took weeks or months to fully recover instead of just days. Assuming the victim was able to make a complete recovery, which at doses as high as ours usually wasn’t realistic.” Danse moved closer and eyed the wound dressing. “Besides, with a spak injection every morning at breakfast, those holes will be gone in two days or less.”

Fingertips brushing over the gauze - Anthony expected it to hurt, then realized he didn’t know what the hell the point of this was. And then he realized that _Danse was touching him._ Part of him wanted to yank his shirt down and jump backwards… but a much bigger part of him wanted more than just touching.

And apparently, a much bigger part of him was going to get what it wanted, because then those fingertips took hold of his shirt.

So that Danse could carefully pull him over.

And kiss him.

Anthony forgot about the dozen or so holes in his body, and about getting injected with stimpaks, and about the rest of the world at large. Danse was warm and solid, smelling like the odd detergent used to get the contamination out of their clothes and tasting like the cigarettes they’d had on the drive over. He was vaguely aware that a similar situation had happened to him one in high school, but this time he wasn’t frantically shoving a friend back out of fear they’d get caught. Instead both palms came to either side of Danse’s face, and in response there were arms around his shoulders.

It probably didn’t last as long as he thought it did, and it ended up with Danse wedged into the corner of the couch with Anthony more or less draped over top, still wrapped in his arms. For a long string of minutes spent in complete silence, life was perfect. Danse let go with one hand so he could run the backs of his fingers along Anthony’s jaw, which made him realize he hadn’t shaved since the beginning of his ill-fated previous shift and brought back reality.

There were so many words, so he picked the one that could ask the most at once: “Why?”

Raising his head, he was surprised to see embarrassment creep across his friend’s face. “I couldn’t even stay standing while they were inspecting us… I thought I was dying, and it didn’t bother me. Then you fell down and I realized if I’d been made sick enough to die, that you’d also be terminally ill. That _did_ bother me. Judging by your current behavior, I’ve gathered that… that my current actions aren’t unwelcome. And I’m glad you’re not going to die.”

Anthony chuckled.

“Next time you can just say you were worried about me. It’s less syllables.”

“I felt you deserved the full explanation-”

“Well, thank you, but like I said, less syllables.” He rested his head on Danse’s shoulder again and sighed a little. “And no, I’m not going to die. Neither are you.”

Danse squeezed him a little and then kissed the top of his head. There were spots where his buzzed-down hair had fallen out, but the doctor assured him it’d grow back in about a month or so. His friend didn’t seem to care.

“Anthony… I… need to ask this, but I don’t want you to feel… pressured or uncomfortable, but… I-”

“Okay, stop before you hurt yourself,” Anthony laughed. “Yes, I think you’re a poor awkward bastard, but it’s endearing.”

“That’s not what I was thinking of, but I appreciate your honesty. You’re not the first person to comment on my lack of verbal capabilities.” Danse took a deep breath, and finally asked a cohesive question. “What about your family?”

Anthony tensed up immediately, and of course he could feel his muscles already wanting to start rattling. Fear made him shaky. This time, though, his mouth also went completely dry, because he didn’t have a good answer. It felt different from Rusty when he’d been in the army. Rusty had also been a very attractive man, and Anthony had learned a _lot_ about sex from him, but… he hadn’t really wanted to be around Rusty on a regular basis. At this second, it was like being struck by lighting - realizing that he always wanted to be around Danse. Anthony wanted to see him when they got up for work in the morning and argue about who could drink the last soda and have moments like this, lying on the couch and forgetting about the world if only for a few minutes.

He didn’t get this feeling from Nora, at least not with anywhere near the intensity.

And it was only now that he understood he never had.

Anthony just kept as still as possible while he processed this information, aware that he was probably making Danse feel very nervous but not knowing how else to react. Because he couldn’t just drop his entire life for this and he knew it. He was married with a son… affairs were already bad, but having an affair with another man was unthinkable for a lot of reasons (especially now that he wasn’t thousands of miles away from said wife and son). He didn’t see a way this could work, at least logistically, even though he knew he _wanted_ there to be a way he could make it work.

“I don’t know,” he finally mumbled. “I just… I want this. But I’m obligated by everything… I just don’t know.”

“Do they make you happy?”

The question was unexpected and painful. But he hadn’t lied to Danse about being Russian, so he found he couldn’t lie about this, either.

“No.” The word rode on a whisper. “But I don’t have a choice. I love my son. I… I don’t hate Nora or anything, either. I thought I loved her. I thought a lot of things that I guess aren’t really true.”

“I’ve read before that loving someone and being in love with them are separate emotions,” Danse offered, almost as quietly as Anthony was speaking. “It’s entirely possible you do love her, just not in the way you were led to believe.”

“I just wanted to be normal.”

Admitting this was costly to Anthony’s pride, because it was true and it fucking hurt even to think, forget about actually saying it. His chest ached and it had nothing to do with the bone marrow biopsy he’d gone through Monday afternoon.

Danse squeezed Anthony into his body. “So did I.”

They just stayed cuddled up on the couch for awhile, being silent again. He thought back, quite randomly, to when they’d gone to Bobrov’s the first time. Explaining to Danse why being Russian wasn’t a bad thing, even though it turned out to be completely unnecessary. This was different. Anthony’s life was virtually perfect and now here he was trying to fuck it all up on purpose. He’d analyzed the situation, identified the probable outcome if he let it progress… and then sat back and watched as things had gone exactly the way he’d thought they would. He’d let this happen. He _wanted_ this. What the hell was wrong with him?

Finally Danse started talking again in a hoarse, wounded tone. “I understand if you find this situation… unreasonable. If you want… if you want me to stop, we can go back to… how things were… and I’ll do my best to remain your friend. I won’t make advances on you again.”

Anthony’s head raised and Danse looked like he was dying. He’d meant what he said, but each word had stabbed him on its way out into the world.

Everything in his chest clenched up and seized at the idea. Anthony didn’t understand how he could possibly make this scenario work out, but God, he wanted it to. Speech suddenly deserted him, though, so he went for a kiss instead. It was a terrible, sad kiss - one man knowing that what he was asking for was wrong and the other knowing they’d go through with it anyway, even understanding how wrong it was. Because this connection was too strong, it felt too important, and no matter how hard they tried they’d never be able to put themselves back into the same box they’d been in before.

“Anthony,” Danse murmured, “I…”

“Anton,” he interrupted. “All the important people in my life call me Anton instead.”

“Anton,” Danse echoed. Amazingly, he smiled a little. “It feels more fitting on you.”

“I grew up with two first names,” he replied. “I’ve always preferred the Russian version.”

“I don’t have a middle name,” Danse admitted. “Nobody gave me one.”

“My middle name isn’t a middle name. It’s Markovich. That literally translates to ‘son of Mark,’” Anthony groaned.

“If I were Russian, what would my name be, then?”

“Yakov. Yasha for short. We do nicknames differently than American names.” Anthony made a face. “I think Jacob works better for you than Yakov does anyway. You’re not Russian.”

“I have no idea what I am.” Somehow, even lying on a couch with another man on top of him, Danse managed to shrug. “Nobody’s ever told me. As far as I know I’m just an American, and that feels very boring to me.”

Anthony laughed. “Okay, then here’s what you are: you’re intelligent, handsome, and you’re the second-best fireman I know.”

“Second to who?”

“Well, me. But I’m always better at everything than everyone else.” Danse somehow managed to look emotionally blank and vaguely offended by that at the same time, and Anthony chuckled. “It’s a joke.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Actually, everyone besides you thinks I’m fucking hilarious,” he grinned. Then Anthony settled a little more against Danse, head tucked under his chin. “Maybe there just needs to be some distance… our next shift doesn’t start until Friday, so we should just forget about the issue for now and come back to it tomorrow.”

“Procrastinating has rarely been useful in my experience.”

“Well, this obviously isn’t an easy problem to solve. If we take a step back and breathe, we might come up with something.”

“It’s an interesting theory.”

“Trust me, I’ve done it before and it helps a lot. Besides, we’ve got a more pressing decision to make.”

“We do?”

“Yes. I don’t know how to cook and my robot’s not here to help me, so how are we going to have lunch?”

Danse did manage to chuckle a little in response. “It’s very fortunate for you, Anton, that I _do_ know how to prepare food… at least on a basic level.”

They ended up driving out to Lexington because (for some reason that escaped Anthony) Cambridge didn’t have its own food market. Christmas was on Friday, though, so Super Duper Mart was crammed with shoppers making last-minute buys for their big holiday dinners. Even though a lot of stuff was out of stock by now, they did manage to gather up six meals’ worth of food for themselves and escape the store again without too much frustration.

Back home, Anthony watched Danse construct a plate full of tidy sandwiches for them to eat while they watched the news on tv. Sitting on the couch with their food, Anthony eventually noticed that they’d graviated together again somehow, leaning into each other with the plate on their legs. It was already such a comfortable feeling, making him relax a little and settle against the other man more than he already was. Today was the only day Anthony had ever seen Danse so at ease, slumped into the couch and not on guard for once, just chewing his sandwich and watching the television screen like there was nothing in the world that troubled him.

* * *

The next morning started off… interesting, to say the least.

Anthony’s immediate thought was to wonder how in God’s name they managed to fit on the couch lying down, because they were both six feet tall and Danse was also broad-shouldered. Then Anthony realized he was sprawled on top of his… friend? Boyfriend? What label should be applied, now?

Under the blanket, they were both still in their boxers, so when Anthony got up he was immediately cold. Their fire brigade uniforms were balled up in the corner of the bathroom, but besides that there was no trace of how things had inevitably turned out last night. It was a little surprising, somehow, that the wet footprints he’d left dashing into the kitchen for cooking oil had evaporated. (Nothing else had been available at the moment.) It had been a very unproductive shower after that. _“It’s been awhile, so… go easy on me, okay? And do a better job going easy on me than when we tried to play chess those few times.”_

Anthony stuffed his outfit into the laundry hamper and folded up Danse’s uniform for him. After setting the stack of clothes onto the toilet lid, he went into his bedroom to throw on a clean undershirt. Going back into the kitchen, he was rudely reminded that Codsworth was out of commission because there wasn’t any fresh coffee waiting for him, which also meant there’d be no breakfast either unless he could manage to figure it out for himself.

Then Danse woke up and saved the day, because he knew how to make coffee and omelets and bacon that was exactly the right amount of crunchy. He also shot them both up again, tossing the used spaks into the garbage even though Anthony was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do that.

“How’d you learn to cook?” Anthony wondered between bites of perfectly made egg. The coffee was strong enough to hold up a spoon, just like it had been in the army, and it made him nostalgic.

“I didn’t have a choice. It was learn to cook or starve,” Danse answered flatly. Of course that was the answer. Danse was a marine, and one of their things was that whole idea of _improvise, adapt, and overcome._ “Once starving was no longer a concern, I worked out the details on how to prepare food to a relatively acceptable standard so that meals wouldn’t be unbearable. Some of my earlier attempts were… unsatisfactory, to say the least.”

Disaster always seemed to choose the strangest times to strike, Anthony would think later. Because a sniper had shot him while he’d been having a cigarette after stabilizing fusion cores in a power armored infantry unit, one of his subordinates had tripped and fallen to his death off a cliff just two minutes following the successful dismantling of a Chinese artillery emplacement, Shaun had somehow managed to break an arm jumping off the bed while he’d been busy fixing a window in the kitchen, ArcJet’s employees managed to spill rocket fuel right as he’d sat down for lunch, and Mass Fusion’s experimental reactor had cracked a pipe during a quiet chat in the firehouse kitchen (and almost melted down, according to the news).

This was the same thing. Anthony was at one end of the table in boxers and an undershirt. Danse was at the other end, also in boxers but with no shirt and a blanket draped over his muscular shoulders. They were in the middle of a fairly late breakfast. And somehow Anthony had completely forgotten his mother was coming over to see him today, and she had a key to the door for the times she had to baby-sit Shaun on occasion and came right in to witness this scene.

“I can explain,” Anthony told her immediately, even though he already knew there was no possible way to interpret this other than what it so obviously meant.

Elena closed the door behind her, not saying a word, and set a box on the kitchen counter. Of course. She’d brought him _pryaniki._ Danse looked more than a little shocked at this intrusion and also stayed silent. Anthony, for his part, just wanted to sink into the ground and die, because that was the only way he could see getting out of this now.

“Um… Jake, can you… get dressed and wait in the living room? I… have to talk to my mom,” Anthony mumbled. He couldn’t look at either of them.

“Do you need me to leave?”

“You don’t have to, we just need to talk,” Elena surprisingly agreed.

Anthony thought his mother would be upset or angry with him about this, because she wasn’t stupid and had clearly already figured this out, but… she was neither of those things. Instead her expression was a mix of sadness and pity, directed entirely at him.

He switched to Russian and immediately tried to lie to her. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Stop.” Elena held up a hand, not buying it, and proceeded to… put the kettle on the stove. Oh, God, was he in for it. His mother drank a lot of tea and he was familiar with the implications. Making tea while she was in his house meant she would be here for awhile and a long, long discussion would inevitably take place. “Before you give me another word, why are there needles in the trash?”

“Oh. The reactor at Mass Fusion almost destroyed itself somehow and we both got taken to the hospital after. Now we have stimpaks every morning for a couple more days to make sure we recover completely.”

“I see. And what’s your friend’s name?”

“Jacob.” Anthony hung his head. “He’s… he’s another fireman from my brigade.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“It started yesterday after we were released from Mass Bay Med. But… but I think we were both thinking about it for a long time.”

Elena sighed quietly. “And it’s not the first time, is it?”

“No,” Anthony admitted, whimpering a little. He was sixteen again, having just crashed the car and being taken to the police station. A sledgehammer of parental wrath was about to drop down on his head. Why had he stopped being thirty five? His son was in kindergarten, how could he still act like such an ignorant child himself? “I’m sorry, mom.”

Elena sighed a second time, pulling over one of the kitchen chairs and sitting directly in front of him. He braced himself to get verbally thrashed, but instead his mother kissed his forehead.

“Anton… my sweet boy, your only enemy here is yourself,” she started, which was absolutely not the direction he’d anticipated for this conversation. “Several years ago, while I was at work, a man came to visit one of the patients, and we assumed they were brothers. I happened to come across them later, and they were holding hands and behaving like a couple. They both had the same look you’re giving me now.”

“And then what?”

“I carried on with my work and did vitals on the patient like nothing was out of the ordinary. Once he was discharged, they sent me flowers and a note thanking me for being kind to them. I find it extremely sad that doing my job in a professional way was the same as being kind to them.”

Anthony couldn’t resist shooting himself in the foot. “You just walked into my house and saw clear evidence that I’m obviously having an affair with one of my coworkers while my wife and son are out of the country, but now you’re only telling me that you think my life is sad…? I think you forgot about the part where you kick my ass.”

“Nora and Anichka have talked to me several times about how unhappy they think you are. Even if you were still a kid and I _could_ punish you, what parent would ever punish their child for being unhappy? You’d never do that to Shaun, and I’m not going to do that to you, either.”

“But there’s something wrong with me,” Anthony choked out. “I don’t know how to fix this. And… I remember Pop saying something about kicking one of the firemen out of his station because his wife caught him with another man…”

“This may come as a shock to you, but sometimes your father can be an idiot,” Elena answered, rolling her eyes. It was amazing that in this situation she got him to chuckle slightly. “Now, before you beat yourself over the head more than you already have, you’re going to invite your boyfriend back into the kitchen to have tea with us.”

Anthony was stunned by that, but slowly got to his feet. He went into his bedroom and put on a pair of sweatpants first, then relayed his mother’s request to Danse and they sat, both on one side of the table and stiffly upright in their chairs like prisoners about to be executed. Anthony still wasn’t sure that wouldn’t happen.

“Do you prefer Jacob or Jake?” Elena asked as she poured the tea.

“Usually I’m addressed by my last name, but Jake is acceptable,” Danse answered uncomfortably. He seemed to be even more baffled by this than Anthony.

“Alright, both of you stop that,” she scolded. Elena reached across to grab their arms, putting their hands together on the table.

Danse and Anthony shared a look, but neither let go of the other’s fingers.

“What am I going to tell Nora?” he asked, staring down at his tea but not drinking it.

His mother was now taking the _pryaniki_ out of the box, putting one on a plate for each of them. _Pryaniki_ was impossible to buy in the States, but his mother knew how to make it because his grandmother had also known how to make it - a bread pastry filled with caramelized condensed milk. It was a delicious treat and Anthony didn’t think he could eat a single bite, not just because fear had cramped his stomach but also because he knew he didn’t deserve it. Similarly, Danse seemed to still be in such a state of shock that he couldn’t eat, either.

“You’re going to tell her the truth,” Elena answered. “It’s going to be painful for everyone, but there’s nothing else you can do.”

“And Pop?”

“No, I’ll handle him,” she decided, which was an enormous relief. “He’s very likely to try and beat this out of you if you do it.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“Eat your food,” Elena insisted, obviously indicating them both.

Anthony forced himself to take a bite no matter how much he didn’t want to eat. Danse stayed still, looking like he was processing something. When he finally told them about it, it made Anthony more sad.

“This is the only incident I can recall with tangible benefits to not having a family. There are less people for me to disappoint.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Pryaniki] is usually translated as "gingerbread," but I'm not sure that's right, because it has no resemblance to gingerbread whatsoever. For this reason, I just kept its original Russian name without trying to translate it. But it is a very delicious bread pastry and a variety of fillings can be used.
> 
> All the stuff about rebreather canisters and potassium superoxide is true. Rebreathers aren't typically used in firefighting or really at all in the US, because the regenerative canisters get hot and could start a fire.
> 
> From the doses they received, it would take weeks to recover in the real world, but in Fallout I'm guessing they'd have better treatment methods and also I didn't want to drag things out with them just lying around in the hospital suffering.


	6. January 2084

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: The F word gets used in this chapter, and no, I don't mean "fuck."

The response he’d gotten from Nora was completely unexpected.

Anthony had waited until Shaun was in bed before talking about it with her, explaining everything - all the way back in high school, when one of his friends had tried to kiss him and he’d panicked; almost a decade of his service in the army, where he’d been Rusty’s fuck-buddy; and now, his affair with another fireman. The painful choking on words wasn’t interrupted as he laid it all out, and then she’d just said two words.

_“I know.”_

_“You know what?”_

_“I knew you were like this. I figured it out awhile ago. And I know it’s not your fault.”_

_“But… what? How could you know?_ I _barely knew until just now… why didn’t you say something?”_

_“Because I didn’t know what to say.” They both had tears rolling down. “And you were trying so hard not to be this way. You just couldn’t do it forever. I think… I understood this would happen eventually. But there’s no way to get ready for something like this.”_

_“I’m sorry…”_

_“It’s not your fault, Anton.”_

Sitting on his bed, he didn’t know how he’d explain this to his son… the fact he was leaving to go live somewhere else. Of course the conversation he’d had with Marko was distracting, to say the least. About ten different versions from his father of what this situation was, all of which calling him a faggot, until Anthony couldn’t take another word without exploding and just hung up the phone without saying anything. Talking to his sister had been the opposite - she’d hung up on him mid-sentence.

Now, thinking about how his entire life had collapsed in on itself, the sound of someone banging on the door was so jarring he almost fell off the side of the bed. Opening the door saw Denis stuffing the barrel of a sidearm into his face.

Anthony’s military training kicked in immediately, and his brother-in-law was disarmed and pinned to the floor almost before he realized who’d threatened him with a weapon. The front door wasn’t even closed first.

“What’s this about, Denis?” Anthony demanded, keeping the pressure on the other man but without hurting him.

“You sick fuck!” Denis howled, thrashing against the carpet. “You sick bastard! Anna told me what you are! What did you do?! We left you alone with Kolya all those times! Did you fucking hurt him?!”

Baffled, Anthony needed a second to process the questions that had just been demanded of him. The pieces slowly drew together: Denis was subtly alcoholic, and on finding out what Anthony was had come over with the intent to murder him.

“Somebody hurt you,” Anthony whispered, slowly withdrawing. Denis was carefully lifted off the floor and sat at the kitchen table, and two doubles of Surkov were brought out. Anthony tossed his back and watched his brother-in-law lift the drink in shaking hands. “Something happened when you were a kid.”

“That’s not your problem,” the other man spat, slamming the shot glass back down so hard it was miraculous it didn’t shatter into his hand.

“Okay, well, I don’t hurt kids,” Anthony insisted. “I don’t hurt people at all. I’m a fireman, it’s kind of my job to _stop_ people from getting hurt. Denis, look at me. I didn’t do anything, especially not to Kolya, okay? And I’m pretty fucking insulted you think I would in the first place. Now look, even though you won’t say anything about it, I’m pretty sure I know what happened to you, and you need to get some help for it. I’m not going to say anything about what you came here to do, but if it happens again, I’m going to have your ass locked up. Now go home.”

He watched Denis shuffle out the door, collecting his pistol on the way. Anthony started shaking - he’d known this would probably get even more unpleasant than it already was, but he never expected to be physically attacked over this. Maybe he should’ve.

* * *

The only thing more shocking than having a gun held in his face was that when Anthony went to his next shift, everything in the fire station couldn’t have been more normal. Nobody knew. He kind of thought someone from his family would’ve called up the station and outed him, but if that’d happened, they weren’t giving any sign of it.

“What’s up with you, man?” Brian asked as everyone was in the kitchen for dinner.

“Huh?” he replied stupidly.

“You haven’t said a word to anyone all day and you’re even paler than normal. Are you sure they got all the radiation out of you last week?”

“Yeah, I… I’m just… problems at home.” Anthony stumbled over every word leaving his mouth. “Probably splitting up with Nora.”

“God damn, really?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Actually, he was living in his car for the time being. Anthony didn’t know what he was going to do when he ran out of clean uniforms. Really, though, didn’t he fucking deserve everything going on right now? He’d ruined his life without help from anyone, so there was nobody to blame but himself. He could’ve stopped Danse from kissing him, he could’ve chosen not to give in to his disgusting impulses and not let his friend fuck him in the shower… he could’ve just not brought Danse home with him in the first place. Because then none of this would’ve happened. His life wouldn’t be a mess and he’d still get to come home to Shaun after every shift.

“So what’re you gonna do?” Theo wondered.

“Well, I’m letting Nora keep the house because my son still needs a place to live. I don’t want to disrupt his life more than I have to over this.” It was kind of true. Anthony had left by choice, even though his wife told him he didn’t have to, because he thought it would be easier on her not having him around.

“Why don’t you just crash with one of us?” Elias suggested. “Um… but not me, I already have a roommate and he’s a dick, so…”

“I’m married and I have two kids,” Brian shrugged.

They all went around and gave excuses. Finally Jerry looked at Danse. “What about you, Jake?”

“I…” Danse looked like he’d been strangled. Apparently he’d actually gotten outed somehow at his last fire brigade and that’s why he’d transferred to Cambridge. “It could be your only option, Anthony, but I can’t recommend it… my apartment isn’t intended for more than one person to inhabit it at a time.”

“Look, guys, I appreciate it, but I’ll figure things out,” Anthony told them, doing his absolute best to sound like he actually believed that.

* * *

His fingers hurt and he could see his breath… it was probably warmer in his car than outside, but it still wasn’t _warm._ Anthony huddled deeper into his coat as the shivering got worse. He just had to sleep a little… his shift had ended, so that meant it was two days and a wake-up until the next one, and then he’d be someplace that wasn’t freezing again.

It hurt to be cold. Not just his hands, now, but his feet, too, and his nose and his cheeks and his chin. It seemed like a bad idea to sleep, actually… he thought he remembered something about this from his survival training before getting deployed to Alaska, that if you got too cold you had to do absolutely anything you could to not fall asleep because you’d freeze to death.

Someone banged on his window and Anthony’s head jerked up - shit, he’d been about to fall asleep exactly like he wasn’t supposed to do. The glass had frosted over, though, so he had to open it to look. It was Danse.

“Is everything okay?”

“No. It’s too cold for you to sleep out here, Anton. You could suffer hypothermia, lose your extremities, or even go into arrest.”

“I have nowhere else to sleep…”

Danse sighed. “Yes, you do.”

Ten minutes later the other man had him wrapped in about ten blankets, rubbing his hands briskly. As feeling came back into his skin, the first sensation Anthony regained was pain. He wondered how close he’d really been to dying.

“You said it’s too small,” Anthony commented through his rattling jaw.

“It is. But my lease expires in March and we’ll find a larger area to set up our living arrangements.” Danse gave up rubbing his hands and instead climbed into the blankets as well, wrapping around him from behind. “The safest and most effective way to revive hypothermia victims is by sharing body heat.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Anthony murmured, leaning back into the comforting warmth. “I’ve taken your dick, anything else stops being weird after that.”

“I suppose that’s a valid point.”

Anthony fell asleep still in Danse’s gentle grip.


	7. March 2084

“How much has been explained to your son on this topic?” Danse asked as they were shoving around furniture in their new place.

“Enough that he understands I’m not going to live with his mother anymore,” Anthony replied, grunting with effort. “But now that we’ve got this figured out, his living arrangement’s going to change. So the two days we’re off, he’ll be here with us. When we have a shift, he’ll be with Nora. I know you’re not super in love with that idea, but he’s still my son and I have to take care of him.”

“Being unenthusiastic about this prospect in no way means I don’t understand it,” Danse pointed out as he centered the couch against the wall. “As long as he’s clear about the fact that under no circumstances should he bring this up while he’s at school.”

“No, he knows that. I told him it’s the same as how he can only speak English in public.”

They managed to get the small bedroom set up for a six-year-old by the end of the day, with a Captain Cosmos bedspread and Unstoppables posters hung on the walls with tape. Shaun would start coming over in the next two-day lull between shifts, so for now they had the place to themselves. Well, kind of. Anthony’s mother came over to do “housewarming,” which meant she brought them dinner complete with a cake for dessert.

Anthony’s life was still kind of uncertain, but there was nothing his mother’s cake couldn’t fix. Even if there was nobody else, she would always love him enough to bring him pastries. Right now, that fact along with his gorgeous (and often unexpectedly sweet) boyfriend was enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments (comments especially!!!!!!) are welcomed and encouraged.
> 
> If you enjoyed this work, please feel free to check out my original WIP, [Nucleus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10027367).


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